ART AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2004, 21 July 1892, Page 38

ART AND ARTISTS.

In a statue of Shelly, executed by Onslew Ford for University College, Oxford, the poet is represented by a naked figure washed up by the waves on the seashore. At the base of the pedestal is a seated muse with an unstrung lyre, deploring the sad death of the drowned poet. A Russian painter named Antocoiski ia creating a sensation in Paris. He was discovered and befriended by the Czar. • His pictures of Bible' subjects, Russian historical subjects, and figures from Homer and Shakespeare will be shown at the Hanover Gallery in London. One of the largest pieces of sculpture sent to the Royal Academy this year is one representing King Duncan's horses (in Shakspeare's "Macbeth") going mad and attacking each other. It is the work of Captain Adison Jones, who has taken up art after serving 20 years in the army. Sixty thousand dollars have beeu refused by Rosa Bonheur fcr a lately completed painting. It may not be generally known that it was to tie Empress Eugenic that Mile. Bonheur owed almost the first recognition of her talents, and it was from the Eoaprjss' hand that tb.B artist received her highly-prized decoration of the Legion of Honour. Last week 6,900g3 was given for " The Monarch of the Glen." The picture is one o£ Landseer's masterpieces, but when such prices can be obtained it seems rather absurd to talk about hard times. The sale of Lord Cheylesmore's pictures realised upwards of L 31,000, apart from the big Landseer.*, which were bought in. Nor is there any disposition to purchase the pictures at Burlington House. A/jrojws of the death of Mr Lumb Stock?, R.A., heie is a characteristic story of thegreat engravtr. A well-known firm of art publisheis made contracts with their artists for engravings. On one occasion Stocks, who had arrauged to do certaia work for 120gs, found it did tot occupy so much time,,as he supposed, and on receiving his cheque, returned 20g<?, which he said ha did not consider was due to him. itCBENS. Of all the painters who ever lived, none perhaps has been gifted with such amazing range and versatility as Rubens. " 1 admit," he writes of himself, " that lam better fitted by natural instinct to execute works of the largest size rather than little curiqbities. Everyone according to his talents ; mine are such that no undertaking — however extraordinary in size or diverse in subject — has ever yet daunted my ccuiaga" His estimate was well founded. Ho did indeed execute " little enriositics " that hardly Teniers himself could have surpassed in fineness of precision ; and he produced not only pictures, but masterpieces, in all the various branches of the painter's art — stilllifo, decoration, flower and animal painting, portraiture, decoration, and history— sacred and profane. And in none of these branches is he more delightful than in his representation of childhood ; no subject did he moie thoroughly enjoy and love to paint. The standard charge habitually brought against llubeus is his "Animalism" — by men who apparently forget that the greater number of our greatest painters have always been essentially healthy, vigorous animals. And he is equally credited with a lack of " soul." Coleridge is one of the many who have made this charge ; and Ruskin, always on the watch for moral qualities in painters' work, says somewhere that Rubens is " only a healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtlyphrased animal, without any clearly perceptible traced of a soul, except when he painta children."— Graphic.